Attempts to successfully market microwave ovens having timers to cyclically turn on and off microwave power to the oven with cycle times on the order of a second have had poor results since such ovens have had high input surge currents. Such high current surges occurred much more often during such one second cycles in the cooking program and could blow fuses more often than in the conventional cycling cooking programs having, for example, one minute cooking cycles with a motor driven mechanically actuated switch used for defrost programs.